


The Draught of Conscience

by flamewarrior



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Coma, Healing, Masturbation, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:00:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamewarrior/pseuds/flamewarrior
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draught (noun) 1. The action or act of pulling something along; 2. The depth of water needed to float a ship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Draught of Conscience

It was the smell that caught his attention first; he closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath and let it settle in his nostrils. It smelled of…

He had barely a moment to feel alarm before the scent dragged him into unconsciousness.

\--0--

"Oh, Harry, I'm so glad it's you."

Minerva McGonagall looked just as Harry remembered her, hair pinned up underneath her tartan hat, square spectacles resting on the end of her nose. The only evidence of the passing years that he could detect was the reduced strength of her hands as she gripped his shoulders, the moisture around her eyes as her gaze flicked over his face.

Harry nodded.

"I wouldn't let anyone else take a case at Hogwarts, Minerva."

Her mouth shifted into a brief smile, then she turned to the table behind her and pointed her wand at the teapot that sat there.

"Why don't you sit down, Harry, and I can brief you properly."

\--0--

So, a teacher was the victim and a student the likely perpetrator. Harry shook his head. The ideal situation in which to meet an ex-lover, Harry thought, was not at said ex-lover’s sick bed, especially when said ex-lover had left his heart full of raw wounds, and then rubbed salt in them by walking into the one job Harry had really wanted, once he’d worked out that being an Auror wasn’t all it was cracked up to be; the tedium of waiting interspersed with the gut-clenching terror of stake-outs and spell-battles had quickly become old – hadn’t he done enough of that before he was even an adult?

Harry took a deep breath to quell his thoughts and stepped on to the moving staircase. Good old Hogwarts: if he hadn’t been there at the time, Harry would never have believed that a devastating battle had ever happened here. There were the same paintings, the same stones, the same classes going on behind the same solid doors.

"Never change," he whispered to the castle under his breath.

After several more minutes of stone corridors and staircases polished by millennia of running feet, Harry pulled up short before the heavy wooden doors of the hospital wing. He took a deep breath and pushed through. As the doors closed quietly behind him, he stood for a moment, taking in the sights and the scents around him. Memories flashed through him, of pain, and healing, and guilt, and he was glad when an unfamiliar voice brought him back to the present.

“Ah, Auror Potter, I presume?”

The woman before him was slender, and taller than he was. He didn’t recognise her.

“Yes, yes.” He stuck out his hand; her handshake was brief and firm. “And you are?”

“Madam Midgen.”

Harry wondered what had happened to Madam Pomfrey. He hoped she was enjoying a quiet retirement somewhere.

“How do you do. I’m here to speak with your patient, Professor…”

“This way.”

Madam Midgen headed off before Harry even had a chance to finish his sentence. Harry followed her bustling form to a screened corner of the hospital wing, where she halted, turned back to him and put a finger to her lips.

“You may talk with him for five minutes _only_. He is in a very fragile condition. I shall be waiting just over here.”

Madam Midgen’s look was so stern that all Harry’s protests died on his lips. He’d just have to make the five minutes count.

He slipped through a gap between the screens and looked the length of the bed. He’d been expecting to see a wan, limp figure, huddled under the blankets. Instead, there was Madam Midgen’s patient, sitting on top of the covers bold as brass, in a paisley dressing gown over shiny black pyjamas, feet crossed at the ankles, shod in leather slippers the colour of red wine, his face obscured by a magazine entitled _World Quidditch Weekly (incorporating Quodpot Quarterly)_.

Harry snorted.

“I thought you were supposed to be ‘in a fragile condition’, Professor Malfoy.”

Malfoy lowered the magazine an inch and looked at Harry over the rims of his glasses.

“One must keep up appearances.” He put the magazine down on the bed. “I suppose you’re here to interrogate me about this awful business?”

Harry grimaced.

“I wouldn’t call it ‘interrogate’. I just need to ask you some questions.”

Malfoy pushed the glasses back up his nose and lifted his hand as if to brush off the linguistic distinction, then dropped his hand abruptly to the bed as if he just didn’t have the strength. Harry thought he saw a tremor in Malfoy’s fingers. He carefully kept his face blank.

“Ask away then, Auror Potter, ask away.”

“So, do you have any idea what happened to you?”

Malfoy laid his head back on the pillows and closed his eyes.

“Hasn’t the headmistress already told you?”

“Yes, but I want to hear it from you.”

Malfoy sighed and folded his hands in his lap. Despite his height and his lithe build, it made him look frail.

“Very well. I walked into the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom three days ago to prepare for the fourth years, when I caught a scent of…” Malfoy’s eyes flicked up to Harry’s face, then dropped again. “Well, what I smelled isn’t important. Almost immediately, I realised the scent was caused by a variant of Amortentia, just before it knocked me out cold.”

“And what happened then?”

“I woke up to the Headmistress and a bottle of smelling salts, and a room full of pupils staring at me, with an impulse to… touch all of the male pupils, in extremely… inappropriate ways.”

“And you’d not had that impulse before?”

Malfoy opened his eyes to glare at Harry.

“I’m sorry, Professor Malfoy, it’s… I have to ask: for the investigation.”

Malfoy continued to glare. Harry felt his cheeks warming, but he didn’t look away.

“No. And to answer your next question, I’ve no idea who did it, but to achieve a variation on Amortentia would take considerable skill. I suggest you start your questioning with other members of staff and NEWT level Potions students. And please don’t ask me who would have motive; even you’re not that dim. Will that be all?”

Harry nodded.

“All for now.”

“Good.” Malfoy removed his glasses and placed them on the bedside table; he closed his eyes again, and pressed his head back against the pillows. “You know your way out.”

Harry moved to the screens, looking back over his shoulder at the long, supine figure on the bed.

Not everyone hates you, Malfoy.

Once past the screens, Harry looked around for Madam Midgen. There she was, sitting in the corner labeling potions bottles. Harry walked up to her and coughed politely.

“Madam Midgen.”

“Ah, Auror Potter. I trust you have everything you need?”

“Yes, yes, thank you. I just wondered, um,” Harry lowered his voice, “is Professor Malfoy’s condition serious?”

Madam Midgen’s eyes softened.

“Yes, Auror Potter, I’m afraid it is. The potion cannot be flushed from his system, since it was administered via the sense of smell. Not only has it had an unfortunate effect on his sexual impulses, it seems also to have diminished his energy, and to be continuing to do so. I estimate that if we don’t do something about it within the next week, Professor Malfoy may become so weak that he will sink into a coma. Professor Slughorn is working hard on an antidote, but he only has what traces of the potion were left in Professor Malfoy’s nasal passage to work on. It is imperative that we find the culprit as soon as possible, and discover exactly what was in that potion.”

Harry swallowed.

“Thank you, Madam Midgen, I’ll work as quickly as I can.”

“Excuse me for asking, Auror Potter, but are you a friend of Professor Malfoy’s?”

“I…”

Harry blinked. Well, there was a question. In all his interactions with Malfoy over the years, through all that intense anger, and then equally intense lust and longing, Harry had never thought to consider what part friendship might have to play. He felt one corner of his mouth lifting in what could have been taken as a smile, gave a small shrug, and left the hospital wing.

\--0--

Harry sighed. The questioning had taken an awfully long time. They’d got through the teaching and other staff quickly enough, but the students... Minerva hadn’t liked it, but after using it on the staff hadn’t turned anything up, she’d finally agreed to him using Veritaserum on all NEWT level students. Much as the thought that the castle’s defences could be so easily breached sent chills down his spine, Harry had hoped against hope that someone from outside Hogwarts was responsible, rather than have it be student.

The reality was even worse than he’d feared.

“Dominique Weasley, what on earth were you thinking?”

The young woman sitting in front of him flicked back her long, strawberry blond hair and somehow managed to look down her nose at him, even though she was a good six inches shorter. Good Lord, she was the spit of her mother, haughty arrogance radiating from every pore.

“I was thinking about the terrible damage done to my father’s face, and how _someone_ in the Malfoy family ought to be punished for all the dreadful things they did! And Violet Nott agreed with me!”

Oh, so that made it alright then. Harry buried his head in his hands. He didn’t have time for this.

“Right, whatever, just tell me what you put in the potion in addition to the usual Amortentia ingredients, and what the cure is.”

Dominique smirked.

“Veela sweat is the only additional ingredient. The antidote, however, requires the application to Professor Malfoy’s penis of the sexual fluids of someone who is willing to spend the rest of their life with him, as a couple.”

Harry would have blushed, but he was too angry.

“And does this ‘application’ have to take place during sex, or can it be collected and then applied.”

“It can be collected and then applied, but where are you going to find someone willing to spend the rest of their life with _that_ Death Eater scum?”

Dominique crossed her arms, a look of utter victory on her face. At that point, Harry had to get up, leave the room and shut the door behind him, before he did something that would lose him both his job and his surrogate family.

\--0--

Back at home, Harry had struggled with himself, and finally had done what he always did when he’d decided what to do but hadn’t quite got himself to the point of doing it. He Floo-ed Hermione.

“Harry, you need to think this through.”

Hermione was clearly doing her best to remain calm and impartial, but the exasperation in her voice was clear, even through the Floo.

“Hermione, if I don’t do this, he’ll go into a coma, which means he might as well be dead.”

“It doesn’t have to be you, Harry.”

Harry clenched his fists.

“And who else are we going to find within a week who’s willing to do this? I can’t just let him die!”

Hermione’s expression turned to sadness.

“Harry, you can’t save everyone.”

“But I _can_ save Draco, and that means I have to try!”

Hermione crinkled her nose and looked at Harry for a long moment.

“Alright, Harry, just say Malfoy agrees to this, and you do it, and you live together as a couple. What makes you think it’s going to work out any better this time than it did last time?”

“Minnie didn’t say anything about having to stay together forever, just being willing to, and if it means he lives, I’m more than willing to try again.”

Hermione shook her head.

“Okay then. I can see when you’ve made up your mind.”

Harry let out a breath of relief. It wasn’t as if he’d stop on Hermione’s say so, but it meant a lot to him that she wasn’t going to try to prevent him.

“So, what does Malfoy have to say about this?”

“Um, well…” Harry looked down at his twiddling thumbs.

“Harry James Potter, do you mean to tell me you’re going to go ahead and do this without even asking him?”

“Um, yes?”

“ _Harry!_ ”

Harry sighed.

“It’s alright, Hermione, I’ll ask him before I do it, don’t worry.” He looked up at her and smirked. “I do have some ethics, you know.”

\--0--

As it turned out, Harry didn’t have a chance to ask him. Minerva took Harry aside as soon as he arrived back at Hogwarts.

“Harry, I’m afraid we’ve bad news from Madam Midgen: Professor Malfoy hasn’t woken up since yesterday afternoon. She thinks he’s descended into a coma.”

Harry’s decision was made for him. He took a deep breath.

“Minerva, I have the antidote; I just need a private room where I won’t be disturbed in order to prepare it.”

Minerva’s eyes widened, but she simply nodded.

“Of course, Harry. Follow me.”

After a surprisingly short walk up a staircase and along a couple of corridors, Minerva led him behind a non-descript tapestry and through a narrow door.

“I’ll see you later, Harry.”

Harry heard Minerva walking back up the corridor as he stepped through the doorway into the room. He found himself in a small room with a desk, a Queen Anne chair and a fireplace. He raised his wand to shut the door and cast Colloportus once he’d heard it click. With some quick wand work, he started a fire, removed his clothes and transfigured a pen from the desk into a wide-mouthed amber glass bottle.

Harry put his wand down on the desk, picked up the bottle instead and set it down in front of the fireplace, then pulled the chair over until it was facing the fire. He sat down, hands on his thighs, and let the fire warm him for a moment. He picked up the bottle and placed it between his legs on the chair seat, trying to ignore the part of his mind that was shouting at him to hurry up. Sex, even sex with himself, wasn’t something that he liked to rush.

He rubbed his hands lightly up and down his thighs, brushed against the hairs on his balls, stroked his fingertips over his perineum. His left hand stayed down in his crotch, palming over his balls, while he moved his right up to hold his cock, which was just starting to pay attention; he ringed it loosely with his fingers and moved from base to tip and back again. He remembered the time that he and Draco had made love – they’d had sex too many times for Harry to count, but they had made love just once.

It had started like this, with the fingers of Draco’s right hand loose around Harry’s cock, his left hand brushing Harry’s perineum and stroking his balls. Draco had kissed him, open-mouthed and wet, tongue running along Harry’s teeth, smooth against his own tongue and on his palate. Harry shivered, letting the memory overwhelm him. He rolled his balls in his hand, as Draco had done, pulling gently on the hair with his fingertips; he let go of his cock to stroke a hand up his belly and chest, to nip and tweak at his nipples, mimicking Draco’s teeth; he sucked his fingers, slicking them with saliva, and moved his right hand down to circle his arsehole with his wet fingertips, teasing himself as Draco had teased him.

He couldn’t keep to the script after that. He gripped his cock tightly with his left hand, moving it up and down in a steady rhythm, while his right continued to rub and press at his hole, finally pushing into himself when he could bear the tease no longer. All he could think of was Draco, Draco’s cock in him, Draco’s hand on his cock, Draco’s breath on his face, the musk of his body all around him.

That thought suddenly pushed Harry to the brink of orgasm. He pressed his fingers against his own prostate and held them still while he grasped the bottle with his other hand and pressed the tip of his cock against the wide opening. Then, his memories of Draco and how he had moved inside him clear as day, he rubbed his thumb against the head of his cock and his fingers against his prostate and came.

Harry longed to wallow in the afterglow of orgasm, to cherish those memories a little longer, but he knew he couldn’t waste time. And anyway, if this worked – and worked out – he’d have plenty of opportunity to make new ones.

\--0--

“So, where did you find someone stupid enough to effect a cure?”

Harry looked despairingly at Minerva. She looked back at him over her glasses. He clutched his hands behind his back, turned his eyes to the space above Dominique Weasley’s left shoulder and willed his cheeks not to show his blush, at least not on his right cheek, where Draco would be able to see it.

“That will do, Miss Weasley! You are confined to your house dorms and the classrooms in which you have lessons until we decide what punishment is most appropriate for you. I think you should consider carefully what fate might await a legal adult who has admitted to attempted murder.”

Dominique turned on her heel, flicking her hair as she went, and flounced from the Headmistress’s office, Professor Flitwick close behind her.

When the door had closed behind them, Minerva turned her stern gaze on Harry once more.

“Insubordinate as her question was, I think Professor Malfoy should hear the answer, don’t you, Auror Potter?”

“Yes, Auror Potter, what on earth was she talking about?”

“I shall leave you two to discuss the matter in privacy. Just ring the bell on my desk when you’re done.”

Minerva turned another hard glance Harry’s way, and left the room. Harry sighed; gathering his much-vaunted Gryffindor courage about him, he turned to face Draco.

“The variant of Amortentia that Minnie, that is, Miss Weasley, made had only one antidote.” Harry coughed. His cheeks were burning. “That antidote was the sexual, ah, fluids of someone who was willing to spend the rest of their life, with you, as a couple.”

Draco’s face became a picture of disgust.

“So you force fed me someone’s… while I was in a coma?”

Harry felt utterly mortified. His instinct was to bury his face in his hands, so at least he couldn’t see Draco looking at him while he said this. He had to content himself with looking at the blond hair resting on Draco’s lapel.

“No, it had to be applied, um, topically.”

“Well, that’s a relief at least. So whose was it then? Who on earth did you find so quickly who’d be willing to… willing to…”

Draco stopped speaking. Harry could almost hear the puzzle pieces fitting together in his thoughts.

“Potter, you are unbelievable. I know you have an addiction to saving people, but this… I thought you’d have been pleased to see me suffer, after how we left things, but oh no, the Gryffindor hero has to save the day and sacrifice himself in the process: the noble Harry Potter, giving up the prospect of domestic bliss to save the life of worthless wretch, Draco son-of-a-Death-Eater Malfoy.”

Draco sounded like he’d run out of steam. Harry looked down at his hands. The only sound in the room was Draco’s laboured breathing.

When Harry spoke, his voice was quiet.

“Draco, I couldn’t let you die.”

There was a sound like cushions being beaten. Harry looked up to see Draco slumped in one of Minerva’s comfy chairs, shoulders rounded, his hands covering his face, and fingers clinging onto his hair.

Harry carried on talking.

“You know I never wanted to split up with you. I thought this could be a fresh start for us, once you knew how serious I was about giving us another try. But after you were cured, when you woke up, I realised I didn’t want you to be with me out of a sense of obligation.”

The sound of muffled, mirthless laughter rose from where Draco was sitting. Draco scrubbed at his face with his hands and rested his elbows on his knees.

“Well, isn’t that ironic.”

“What do you mean?”

“Harry, the whole reason I split up with you, before… all that stuff I said about not being ready to settle down with you, not being sure I was in love with you, you had to know that was utter guff.”

Harry looked at Draco, open-mouthed. His chest felt tight, too small a space to contain the anger and frustration and hope all trying to fill it.

“I… are you telling me that you, that we…”

Draco made a small, high sound, then suddenly he was right in front of Harry, arms surrounding him, hands on his back, in his hair, and, best of all, hot mouth pressed against his own, tongue seeking entry against his lips. Harry managed a muffled, “Oh!” and then grasped Draco to him and kissed him back for all he was worth.

When they both pulled back for breath, giggling and flushed, Draco said, “You know we can’t live in my quarters here. I’d never hear the end of it from the students, not to mention the Board of Governors.”

Harry grinned, watching the sparkle in Draco’s eyes.

“I’m sure we’ll find somewhere suitable. Just for now, you know how to cast a Silencing Charm, don’t you?”

Draco’s smile became a leer that sent shivers down Harry’s spine.

“Oh, you bet I do.”


End file.
